Interview #925: Ethington, Robert L. (June, 2009)
View all of First Interview Session (April 17, 2008)
00:09:20 - 00:11:49 Typical Day
typical day, projects, reports, industry, public inquiries
00:09:20
Okay. Now, could you describe a typical day while you were working at the FPL? Just something along the lines of where---because I'm sure that you had several different projects that you were working on---but what would you do when you came into the office on a typical day?
Well I have to ask you a question here, you're talking about in those early student days there or are you talking about later on when I became a full-time employee? Because the answer would be fairly different.
Well, actually if you could just describe both that would be great.
Well, as a student you know, a typical day was spent working on whatever project I was assigned to; some very specific, very narrowly defined kind of project like that description of the behavior of a big ring. Where there is a chance for the student to go through first of all doing the analytical work to predict how the device might perform, then actually putting it in a machine and test it and see whether our predications were good, and then finally, write up a report or describe that work before we got out of Dodge [the summer ended]. So, that, a typical day then was pretty much narrowly focused on one project, trying to finish that project during the probably three months that I was going to be there.
Later on, when I was a full-time employee a typical day---well it's hard to describe what a typical day might have been, but much more varied, not nearly so focused on one single little project. There were, there was time spent in a typical day doing future planning, there was time working on some individual projects, there was time interfacing with the public, usually through either face-to-face visits of somebody from the public ,or through correspondence, telephone calls, and things like that. So, those days, which is the way I spent most of my time while I was at FPL, were quite varied. And as time went on and I moved out of research and into research administration there was a change again in the kind of work that I had to do.

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